Question Everything my laptop writes on external HDD gone as I connect it to another computer.

[TomScheeper]

Since two weeks, I have this 1TB Seagate portable HDD. I keep my study files on this so that I can easily reach my files when at home (desktop computer) and at university (laptop). I used to do this on a flash drive, but that one gave in after about four years. So my problem: whenever I write something from my laptop onto this HDD, the written files disappear when I connect it to my computer. If I reconnect it to my laptop after writing, the files are still there. If I add any files from my desktop to my HDD, they are still there when I connect it to my laptop and stay. So only files written from my laptop are gone after connecting it to my desktop. I did all checks I could think of:

1. I always unplugged the HDD after my laptop/desktop had turned off
2. I always unplugged the HDD after the HDD itself had turned off (light had gone out)
3. There are no hidden files
4. There is zero "size" and "size on disk" in the respective folders I lost files
5. There are no quarantined files in my antivirus (MalwareBytes)

Both computers are up-to-date with Windows 10 and I used a USB 3 port on both of them. The harddisk performed very well (transfer speed) when it was connected. The hard drive was formatted by default as exFAT and the problem occured. I then formatted it as NTFS and it has persisted...

NOTE: I don't care about recovery of the lost data. All data is mirror to online storage, but I just want to use my hard disk so I don't have to file stream or whatever.

If anyone can shed a light on this issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[TomScheeper]

Update: after some more googling I ran the following command "chkdsk /r F:" and I have posted the log here: https://pastebin.com/DqM6Y38M.
The files have now returned. There seemed to be some errors regarding the index. Is there any way I can prevent this error from happening in the future?

Did more research and found this topic from a few years ago. This seems to be the only one with a similar problem to mine, but without a real solution...

Ext USB HDD Missing Folders

I have two Mini-ITX PCs with ASRock N3150B and N3700 motherboards, both run up to date Windows 10 on SSDs. On the N3150B system, I created data files in several folders on a portable 2TB Seagate external USB 3.0 drive. The drive checks out OK running chkdsk /v /f and CrystalDiskInfo reports no...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Grobe]

Well, you already say you have backup routine and that is good.'

Can you provide S.M.A.R.T. data for that hdd ?